Wednesday, December 21, 2011

On December 21st, many of Korea’s top stars and idols attended the launch event for the new KT digital music service, ‘Genie‘.

‘Genie’ aims to be a music distribution service like Apple‘s iTunes. Co-produced by KT and KMP Holdings, the ‘Genie’ system breaks away from the standard “pay for song” system by raising the price and including digital songs, music videos, and pictorials as a set package.

The service stands out in that once a digital song is purchased, it can be transferred to your smartphone, PC, MP3, and IPTV through your personal ‘Cloud’.

Since KMP Holdings is in charge of the songs’ distribution, music from SM, YG, JYP, Media Line, Star Empire, Union Can, Music Factory, Sony Music, and avex Entertainment will be made more readily available.

‘Genie’ also increased the amount of proceeds distributed back to the artist and label from 50% to 70%.

CEO Kim Young Min of SM Entertainment stated, “Even if our songs were downloaded a million times on other monthly music services, the amount we benefited from it wouldn’t be enough to even shoot a music video. We hope that ‘Genie’ will be a sensible program to bridge that gap.”

The problem for consumers, however, lies in the fact that other music distribution services are still significantly cheaper. ‘Olleh Music‘ charges 6 cents per song download and tempting certificates like 150 song downloads for $9 USD.

Although ‘Genie’ isn’t in service yet, officials are looking at 10~60 cents per song, especially since labels can price their songs as they wish. Officials predict that new songs will be sold for 60 cents while older songs are available for 10 cents, making it more than double what they would pay for on another service.

A KT representative explained, “For those that download less than the 150 songs offered as a base on other services, it is more beneficial to use ‘Genie’, especially since they can download other items like music videos and pictorial packages that aren’t offered on other platforms.”